A moving or mobile machine, such as an earthmoving machine, an excavation-type machine, a mining machine, or the like, may be employed for mining or another earthmoving operation. The machine may employ large earthmoving, excavating, drilling, or mining equipment, such as an electric mining shovel, configured to dig and/or load earthen material from a worksite, such as an open-pit mine, to one or more large off-road haulage units, such as off-highway trucks that may be driven by a driver or autonomously or semi-autonomously controlled. The shovel may be electrically powered and may receive power from a high-voltage cable that is tethered to the rear of the machine. The electric cable may lie across the ground of the worksite during operation of the shovel. When the shovel swings between a digging location and a loading location where the shovel loads a mobile vehicle (such as an off-highway truck), the cable may be dragged across the ground and the location of the cable may change relative to the ground. Similarly, the cable may move when the shovel moves, such as when the shovel moves from one digging location to a subsequent digging location.
Off-highway trucks may navigate to and from the location of the shovel in order to transport the earthen material from the worksite. A driver of the off-highway truck must avoid contact with the electric cable so as to prevent damage to both the electric cable and the truck. For similar reasons, an autonomous truck must avoid contact with the electric cable. However, mobility and navigation around the electric cable may be difficult because the driver of the truck may be unable to see the ground, and thus may be unable to locate the electric cable near the truck. In the case of the autonomous truck, the location of the cable must be determined since there is no driver.
FIGS. 1A and 1B show examples of related systems in which the location of the electric cable is managed. As shown in FIG. 1A, when electric mining shovel 110 is located at digging location A, the boundary of isolation zone 120 in which electric cable 130 lies on the ground is determined. Specifically, the boundary of isolation zone 120 extends from adjacent the high-voltage power source 140, to which one end of electric cable 130 is connected, to shovel 110, to which the other end of electric cable 130 is connected. The boundary of isolation zone 120 may be marked with visual markers (e.g., safety cones, fencing, etc.), and/or the coordinate locations of the boundary of isolation zone 120 may be determined (e.g., with global position system coordinates, sensors, etc.), so that a driver-operated and/or autonomous vehicle (e.g., a truck loaded with earthen material removed by shovel 110) may be prevented from driving over electric cable 130.
As shown in FIG. 1B, when electric mining shovel 110 is moved to another, adjacent digging location, such as from digging location A to digging location B, the boundary of a different isolation zone 140, in which electric cable 130 now lies on the ground, must be determined. Thus, every time shovel 110 moves to a different digging location, the boundary of another isolation zone in which electric cable 130 lies on the ground must be determined. This boundary determination is a time-consuming and labor intensive procedure, and operation of driver-operated and autonomous vehicles around shovel 110 must be halted until the boundary of the isolation zone is determined, to ensure that electric cable 130 is not run over by any of the vehicles operating in the vicinity of shovel 110.